I'm a bit late on this announcement, but there's been some more sad news, and for the first time in weeks, it has nothing to do with any misguided decisions by Disney.
Prolific Expanded Universe author and longtime animated series writer Michael Reaves has passed away. He was 73 years old.
Reaves is sadly one of many EU contributors to have passed away in recent years, along with Tom Veitch and Dave Wolverton. And just like those two late authors, Disney and LFL have either failed or neglected to publish any sort of eulogy on their site, or any form of social media...so it again falls to fans to mourn his loss, and celebrate his achievements.
Michael Reaves' tenure with the EU wasn't as extensive as someone like, say, Allston or Watson or Ostrander/Duursema, or whose contributions were early staples a la Zahn or Stackpole. But his work nevertheless shines as some of the most underrated SW literature that brought a sense of grit, texture, and sophistication to its universe and characters. Where Zahn excelled in military sci-fi, the X-Wing Author Duo specialized in dogfighting heroics, Stover excelled in character studies, and Golden in fantastical world-building...Reaves, by contrast, brought raw hard-boiled street level storytelling to the setting, filled with heated pursuits, games of intrigue, brutal deaths, and compelling characters, often cloaked in the shadowy criminal underworld of the Star Wars universe. Yes, that setting that shows like
Mandalorian and
Andor are both acclaimed for exploring? Reaves did it first, and better, almost twenty years ago.
Like Jude Watson, he would gain a cult following by using his own little corner of the EU to utilize recurring characters and plotlines even books set decades apart. And just like Watson, his books were largely rooted in the early 2000's novel boom of the Prequel era. One of his most notable books is the brooding and nail-bitingly tense Darth Maul solo book, called
Shadow Hunter. This book dealt in an untold chase story set just prior to
The Phantom Menace, wherein Palpatine is putting the finishing touches on executing his Naboo Blockade Plans
, only for a traitorous Neimoidian to race to the Coruscant streets to sell his knowledge of the plan to the highest bidder in the undercity black market. What follows is Maul's brutal assassination mission to track him down, as more innocents and bystander characters get roped in, and find themselves in the crossfire of the Sith Warrior's deadly mission.
This book would put Reaves on the map for many fans, who reveled in his seedy depiction of the Coruscant underworld, employing the mood and stylings of doom-laden and morbid noir films, as well as managing to capture the cold-blooded, calculated essence of Maul's character just as well as
the Ron Marz comic published one year earlier.
Reaves would also gain plenty of fame, and even bring many of the characters and concepts from
Shadow Hunter back, in his contribution to the beloved Clone Wars Multimedia Project, the
Medstar Duology.
Novel-wise, the Multimedia Project would vary greatly in quality and focus...but these two books were and still are seen as massive highlights of the era, spoken of in the same reverence as
Shatterpoint and
Yoda: Dark Rendezvous. As its name would suggest, these books dealt with a team of Jedi Medics, pitched by Reaves himself as the Star Wars equivalent of the TV show,
M*A*S*H*. While other novels dealt with the blitz and heroics of major battles,
Medstar was special for dealing with the consequences of the war...the frantic dilemmas and camaraderie of the battle surgeons, comprised of Reaves' own characters as well as filmic side-character, Bariss Offee. Bariss' characterization in particular would go on to become a fan favorite, with Reaves adding flesh, personality and struggle to throwaway character from the films who didn't even have any speaking lines. These books would also go onto illustrate a lot of EU fan's ongoing frustration with the TCW cartoon, as the needless butchering of Bariss to serve as a foil and empowering tool for Ahsoka's character in that series was not only seen as unnecessary, but irreconcilable to this day.
Reaves would finally get his chance to work outside of the parameters of character spin-offs and tie-in storylines to play in a sandbox almost entirely of his own making, and seized the chance to write the hard-boiled pulp fiction story he always wanted...the
Coruscant Nights trilogy. Featuring an Order 66 survivor turned detective in the Dark Times Era, Reaves got to spend all the time he wanted in Coruscant's underbelly, unraveling mysteries and bringing out his inner Raymond Chandler to bring about a series that still stands alone as the only Star Wars series to deal with street-level crime fiction, rather than side-tracking into smuggling or bounty hunting. Reaves' efforts would be contradicted by TCW yet again, as notable Jedi Even Piell--whose death Reaves had written in this series--would be killed off
during the war by TCW's writers, for the highly crucial and absolutely necessary narrative function of being a random casualty of some journey Anakin and Ahsoka were on. But unlike Karen Traviss, who refused to put up with retcons that broke the fabric of her novels, Reaves actually didn't let the shows continuity flubs affect his work...and in fact, rather bravely tried to accomodate the show by making overt references to the series in his final book tying up the storyline,
The Last Jedi (yes, really), in an attempt to be a team player and keep synergy with the show.
Reaves would eventually collaborate with
Shadows of the Empire scribe Steve Perry on the serviceable but ultimately forgettable
Death Star novel. Perry, who had incorporated a lot of criminal elements and seedy
Godfather-esque dealings in his own work on
Shadows evidently recognized a kindred spirit, and they would soon collaborate on the loose prequel novel to the 1996 multimedia project,
Shadow Games, which followed a rags-to-riches galactic celebrity that would step in some hazardous entanglements, and enlist the aide of not only Dash Rendar, but Han Solo...who would both fight side-by-side in a team-up that fans had spent years wistfully begging for.
Unfortunately, this would mark a sudden halt in Reaves' contributions. For you see, the reason that his tenure with Star Wars ended up being so criminally short--far shorter than many of his peers--is because he unfortunately developed Parkinson's disease relatively early into his career, hence why he had to collaborate with others on many of his novels, including his wife and daughter. As symptoms would worsen, he lost the ability to comfortably type, and the years would eventually diminish his ability to pen stories altogether. A tremendous shame that robbed us of numerous stories far too soon.
What made Reaves' stories special, so organic and vibrant, could be attributed quite easily to his past experience not on other novels, but other mediums. I've mentioned how a key aspect to why the Expanded Universe was curated so well was because many of the authors specialized in a niche form of fiction prior to jumping onboard to Star Wars---Stackpole having done
Battletech novels, Luceno having done
Robotech, Salvatore and Denning on
Forgotten Realms, Golden on
Warcraft, and so on. Reaves, however, was unique in that prior to Star Wars, he'd specialized in both novels and
animation. In the included photo above, you may notice some Batman memorabilia adorning his shelf, and that's for a very good reason...Reaves had done work for that cartoon series.
That's right, Michael Reaves was part of the longtime,
legendary alumnus who contributed to
Batman: The Animated Series, walking amongst giants like Alan Burnett, Paul Dini, & Bruce Timm. Not only did he co-write several classic episodes like
Vendetta, Feat of Clay, and my personal favorite,
Perchance to Dream, he was part of the writing team for the tour-de-force,
Mask of the Phantasm.
All of that alone would be impressive enough, but to animation enthusiasts like myself, Reaves' greatest contribution to the world of 90's cartoons was without a doubt his
mountainous writing credits on the cult Disney hit,
Gargoyles. Yes, Greg Wiseman can talk your ear off about how the series was his creative brainchild, how he came up with the concepts and stories for a bulk of the episodes, but the dialogue and characterization for many of the BEST episodes of the series came from the writing efforts of Michael Reaves and his wife, Brynn Chandler-Reaves. Characters like Goliath, Elisa, Xanatos and Demona shone in the jaw-dropping standouts he wrote, along with the series pilot, all episodes featuring the Pack, the battle with Oberon, episodes that dealt with death like the Egypt episode, and the universally-acclaimed all-time favorite of fans, the
City of Stone four-part series climax.
Gargoyles would literally be
nothing without Reaves and his wife, and if you want to know what the series would look like without them and if Greg Wisman was running about unchecked and unwrangled, take a gander at
Young Justice sometime.
It would be no exaggeration to say that there's a very good chance that Michael Reaves had a hand in your childhood pastimes, and mine as well. Whether you grew up on his Star Wars novels, or the standout episodes of any show he worked on, you likely saw the rich character writing and engaging storytelling that he was capable of. And while his capacity to produce work of that quality was cut tragically short by physical hurdles he couldn't control, in that short time he still lent his craft to some of my favorite stories I remember immersing myself in as a kid...stories that will likely enrapture countless other kids and adults for years to come.
